Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day. I received the following just today and thought it was quite interesting. Somehow, boys are a bigger bother than girls when they are small.

Life lessons from a mother with boys...
a) for those with no children this is hysterical.
b) for those with grown children past this age, this is hiliarious.
c) for those who have children this age, it is not funny.
d) for those who have children nearing this age it is a warning.
e) for those who have not yet had children, this is birth control.

1.) A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house 4 inches deep.
2.) If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with rollerblades, they can ignite.
3.) A 3-year old Boy's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
4.) If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound Boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20x20 ft. room.
5.) You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
6.) The glass in windows (even double-pane) doesn't stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.
7.) When you hear the toilet flush and the words "uh oh," it's already too late.
8.) Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.
9.) A six-year old Boy can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36-year old Man says they can only do it in the movies.
10.) Certain Legos will pass through the digestive tract of a 4-year old boy. (dogs also!)
11.) Play dough and microwave should not be used in the same sentence.
12.) Super glue is forever.
13.) No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk on water.
14.) Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
15.) VCRs do not eject "PB & J" sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.
16.) Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
17.) Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
18.) You probably DO NOT want to know what that odor is.
19.) Always look in the oven before you turn it on; plastic toys do not like ovens.
20.) The fire department in Tampa, FL has a 5-minute response time.
21.) The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy
22.) It will, however, make cats dizzy.
23.) Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
24.) 80% of Men who read this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid.
25.) Women will pass this on to almost all of their friends, with or without children!

Mothers -- we just don't appreciate them enough. And that's partly because our memories are so short. We don't remember what Mom did for us when we were tiny and helpless, when we drank nothing but milk, when we possessed only one talent: changing the color of our diapers.

So, to all the mothers, a Happy Mother's Day.

No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.--Florida Scott-Maxwell, American writer and psychologist(1884-1979)

Who is a gifted child?

Recently, there was a discussion in a forum which I participated in on gifted children. Below is what I wrote in that forum.

Let me share with you on this forum my own experiences and opinions.

I took part in the 1st MAS-STAR mind contest and was one of 6 people who got perfect scores in the final test. For all the great minds in in the contest organisers, the tie-breaker was a lucky draw. I guess even great minds are sometimes stumped with the problems they faced. :)

NAGC (National Association of Gifted Children) was a relatively young organisation then. I comtemplated registering my daughter who was still pre-school then. However, in conversations during the MAS-STAR mind contest, I learned that the tests then were quite skewed towards engineering and mathematics. It tests our logical thinking rather than our creativity. Or as the management gurus put it, left brain rather than right brain.

My very young daughter then has started to learn to spell and recognise words. She saw the word "KLIM" on the tin one day and spelt out loud "MILK" milk. (I have to admit it did not occured to me then that KLIM is MILK spelt backwards.) Children obviously are not limited by our paradigm or the paradigm they will be pounded with when they grow older.

Well, my daughter now is an accomplished musician (not the concert type) and works for a PR firm. She went through the science stream when in school, because of all the encouragement to take up "science & technology". Fortunately, she decided to switch when entering college. I am glad she did not follow her father's footstep in taking up science.

Is our education system flawed? It does not appear to be so except that it is very much a paper chase (which was true then in many universities) and the extra encouragement given to science and technology. In my days, the cream of the form are automatically put into the science stream. the remnants put to arts stream. That put a stigma on to the arts student. If there is a flaw in our system, this is it. However, I am glad that this is somewhat improving now with more emphasis given to the arts.

When we talk about gifted children, we should not be limiting ourselves to the few who can do form 6 math while in standard 1. Children have no fear of being wrong, unless we keep reprimanding them for every mistake they make. We all have read about the many failures Edison had before he invented the incandescent lamp. I wonder how many scoresheets ended up on the floow before Beethoven completed one of his symphonies. Dr. Yew KK got it right when he wrote "you are creative, let your creativity grow". Is being creative synonymous with gifted? I'll let you decide on that.

I read in this forum before about our youths applying into Ivy League colleges. I hope that is not the main objective. Someone wrote, look for a job that you like, the rest will fall in line. You need to be happy with what you are doing, to live out your dreams, not someone else's. I have a colleague who took up law to comply with her father's wishes but ended up working in communications. She has moved to different roles but she is happy with what she is doing.

So, it's not just our education system that is pounding our children with their paradigm. We, parents, do the same. Perhaps that's why home tutoring is gaining popularity. Unfortunately, we cannot avoid tests as that is the most common means to assess skills.

My children are both grown up now. For the youths and those with young children, I wish you all the best.

Cheers.